The Gerber Mark II is a fightingknife manufactured by Gerber Legendary Blades from 1967 to 2000, with an additional limited run of 1500 in 2002,[1] and full production resuming as of July 2008.[2] It was designed by retired US Army Captain Bud Holzman, who based the pattern on a Roman Mainz Gladius.[1][2]

During the Vietnam war, the first production run of this knife had a 5-degree offset between the blade and the grip in order to ride in the sheath more comfortably and give the user a grip similar to that of a fencing foil.[1][2] This design feature lead to a significant amount of knives being returned by users for having a "bent blade", so Gerber discontinued that element on subsequent production runs. In the 1970s, the military's base/post exchanges discontinued selling these knives, reasoning that they were "not in good taste" or "too brutal".[3]Al Mar, then working for Gerber as a knife designer, added the sawtooth serrations toward the hilt, marketing the knife as a "survival aid", making it more appealing to the PX System, which resumed selling the Mark II as a survival knife, rather than a fighting knife.[3]

Gerber manufactured a scaled down version of the Mark II known as the Mark I. The Mark I had a 4.75 inch (12 cm) blade and was marketed as a boot knife.[5]